Space Empires, Bee Communication, and Nights Out
by gallifreyburning
Summary: Three random headcanons, because this trainwreck of a movie is the most important thing in the universe. NOTE: This is now a full-fledged proper fic, called "The Journey of a Thousand Miles", and it's located here (just remove the extra spaces when copy-pasting the url): archiveofourown . org / works / 3464324


**In response to a question from youburntlikethesun ( gallifreyburning . tumblr post / 111863000444 ) : "I just saw Jupiter Ascending and I'm kind of absolutely still laughing and I want to see it again immediately and probably never ever stop watching it what do I do?"**

You immediately start filling in all your time between showings with headcanons, to ease the pain.

Like, for instance, the reason Jupiter finally begins to figure out how to deal with her giant space fortune (and ultimately her space empire) is because she wants to buy a car. But it isn't for herself, it's for the lady whose car Caine stole on the first day they met, the one they drove out to Stinger's farm and never returned. So Jupiter's first baby step in governing her kingdom is to transfer space-credits into dollars in a bank account on Earth, buy a brand new car, and leave it (along with the keys and title and a "sorry" note) in that woman's driveway.

Stinger Apini doesn't dance. Well, he _rarely_ dances, only ever when he's alone and the biological urge from the bee side of his splice gets the better of him. Kiza has a few videos of her dad in the garden, twirling and wiggling in precise formations, taken when he didn't realize she was watching, because if he found them he'd confiscate her phone and cram it into the nearest honeycomb.

One night, only a week after she returns to Earth, Jupiter gets the brilliant idea to take Caine out to a club. It'll be dark, so his ears won't stand out, and it'll allow them to be together but around people, too. She asks if he's okay with it — of course he is, nobody in the 'verse fought harder or partied harder than Stinger's division in the Legion, they were legendary. Caine could drink everyone besides Stinger under the table and still wake up clear-headed enough to sail into battle the next morning, no sweat.

Apparently nothing in a universe full of terses and their fermented concoctions could prepare Caine for vodka.

Three shots in and he's on the dance floor, howling along with the music — literally howling. He tries to dance, stumbles into some other patrons, and Jupiter has to intervene to prevent a fight.

 _Turn off your stupid gravity boots!_ she hisses in his ear, dragging him as he floats a few inches off the floor, all the way to the opposite side of the bar. It takes him several minutes to remember the right key combination.

So the rest of the night they're in a booth in the back, Caine slurring about his loneliness and how he's been discarded his entire life, except now everything is different. Jupiter eases into his lap and tells him how much she understands — being an illegal immigrant has forced her into the same underclass existence. She's never fit in, never felt like she had a place. He keeps calling her "your majesty," even as he works up the nerve to kiss her, and eventually progress to second base. Which is also precisely when the vodka finally gets the better of him and he passes out, slides right out of the booth and under the table.

Jupiter spends a few frantic minutes trying to wake him up, pauses to use her phone to google whether vodka is poison for dogs, then goes back to trying to get him upright. The bartender notices what's happening and has the bouncers (three of them, it takes _three of them_ ) carry Caine outside. They manhandle him into a taxi, so he's all sprawled out across the backseat, his head dangling. Jupiter climbs in on top of him, delicately lifts his head out of the way, and closes the door.

The driver pulls away, and asks where she wants to go. Jupiter gives him directions to Stinger's farm. (Where else? She can't take him to her family's house, they'd flip. And she sure can't haul him up to the 101st floor of that skyscraper he's still squatting in, not all by herself.)

The taxi driver immediately pulls over and orders them out of the car, because who in their right mind would drive off into the midnight countryside with an eyeliner-wearing pointy-eared WWE-wrestler-sized goth biker, unconscious or not?

It takes Jupiter fifteen minutes to wrestle Caine out of the backseat an onto the sidewalk; the driver refuses to help.

Good god, do wolf-human splices have _lead_ for bones?

Jupiter calls Stinger (he's grumpy when you wake him up in the middle of the night, Jupiter files this information away because who knows when it might come in handy), and then she has to wait under a streetlight with her unconscious werewolf-angel boyfriend's head in her lap for an hour. She alternates between Candy Crush boards, and watching Caine twitch and whimper adorably his sleep, before Stinger gets all the way into the city and downtown.

Stinger gets out of his battered Ford truck without a word, rolling his eyes at the sight of Jupiter and Caine on the sidewalk. He picks up Caine like a sack of potatoes, slinging him over one shoulder, and then tossing him into the bed of the truck.

"You need a ride home, your majesty?" he asks Jupiter, slamming the tailgate.

"I thought I'd stay with him," Jupiter replies. "Y'know, be there when he wakes up."

"He's a bloody nightmare in the mornings," Stinger grumbles. "But it's your funeral." He holds open the passenger door for her.

Jupiter thanks him and climbs in the bed of the trunk with Caine instead. She lays down next to him, head resting on her hands. For the entire drive out, she stares up at the night sky, pricked with stars.


End file.
